the role of a lifetime

In opera, roles change. A singer might play a queen in one production and a grieving mother in the next. You might audition for the lead role and be cast as the maid or the trusted best friend instead.  You might sing a fabulous aria in the show that makes people yell, “Brava!”  Or, you might be singing in the chorus and your name isn’t even listed in the playbill.

The stage constantly shifts, the characters evolve, and each new production asks something different of you. Life, as I’ve come to learn, works much the same way.

Years ago, I made a choice that reshaped my journey in life. I was offered an opera role—an opportunity that promised artistic growth and professional recognition. But I turned it down. Not because I didn’t want it, but because I had already stepped into a new and unexpected role: motherhood.  I had a baby boy named Ben.

That role didn’t come with applause or opening-night flowers, but it has been the most demanding and most fulfilling one I’ve ever accepted.  

So I stayed close to home. I loved being a mother so much that I had two more children, two gorgeous little girls.  I stopped taking singing jobs that required travel. I traded auditions and applause for morning carpool and post-production cast parties for bedtime stories. I taught my children how to read and took them to piano lessons so that they could learn about music.

I drove them to lacrosse and volleyball practices. And, I took them with me to the opera—not as a performer, but as a professional writer and an opera critic for international opera publications. I added that role to my repertoire. I wrote about productions with my children sitting right beside me in velvet seats, watching the very art form that had shaped my life for so many years. I published research about how pregnancy impacts the singing voice.

Then, I stepped into yet another role—as a professor of voice at Emory University. There I coached young singers, and helped them understand not just vocal technique, but musical and artistic expression. Many of my students went on to sing on Broadway or on the concert stage. I wasn’t the one onstage anymore, but I was still a part of the music—watching from the wings.

And now, in this current chapter, I’ve taken on yet another role—one I never imagined when I began studying opera. I’m now a speech-language pathologist specializing in voice disorders, and my work involves the art and science of the voice. Now my role is to work with people who have lost their voices to injury or disease. My vocation these days is to help others rehabilitate their voices.

What opera has taught me, and what life keeps confirming, is this: we are not meant to stay in one role forever. We are meant to evolve as human beings. To adapt to change with grace and courage because some seasons call us to stand in the spotlight while others ask us to take on a supporting role.

And through each chapter—opera singer, mother, voice professor, speech-language pathologist—I’ve come to understand that each role is integral in this life.  In an opera there are leading roles, supporting roles, and instrumentalists.  There’s an orchestra playing in the pit.  There’s a conductor and there are countless people backstage moving the sets, running the lights, and calling the scenes.  Each role is incredibly valuable to the whole.

And sometimes, the most important work we do is not standing onstage—but helping someone else to take the spotlight.